


Action and Reaction

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Nerd Derek Hale, Punk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stiles intrigued Derek, and because Derek thought everything had a formula, that everything was action and reaction, he wanted to know what Stiles was reacting to. </p><p>The whole punk thing? It was a social commentary. It was someone standing up for something, and Derek wanted to know why Stiles thought he had the right to stand up for when everyone else was just trying to get through the day."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Action and Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> I like Punk!AUs a lot, and there's not enough of them and I saw [this post](http://scrounging-abilities.tumblr.com/post/67431389125/loislame-im-so-predictable-the-inside-of) on Tumblr and felt inspired. 
> 
> It's meant to be set in college, but as an Australian I have no idea how the college system works. So, this mostly takes place in a tutorial which is a small class of about 20 students going over whatever topic the lecture discussed. The tutor is the teacher for the tutes, and I've always likened them to what TA's are, but again, I have no idea so I apologise for inaccuracies.

They shouldn’t go together. Not really. Derek is like math. Goes by a formula and strictly isn’t open to interpretation. Stiles is like something a lot less formulaic. Like art or literature. 

Derek is straight lines and curves that can be determined by a simple expression. There is nothing simple about Stiles. He is the wolf tattoo hidden underneath the hair that grew back when he decided he need to change it up from his undercut. He is the ‘mom’ tattoo that sits on his neck, tacky and cliché, and utterly perfect because that is what love is.

So, no, they shouldn’t go together because Derek is everything that Stiles is not. 

Derek has a backpack containing six folders, arranged alphabetically and containing his study notes and course outlines, and his required textbooks and suggested readings. 

Stiles has a leather messenger bag he rescued from a thrift store, held together only by duct tape and safety pins, that contains a melted fruit roll-up, as well as a half-empty can of spray paint and some empty sharpies that were definitely not used for tagging or graffiti. The one folder he actually does have is full of old hand-written and photocopied zines on the local punk scene he picked up from various stores, chronicling how the scene, which was still very much thriving (the mainstream press was not to be believed on the issue, of course) thank you very much, had become what it is today. The only book he bothered to bring at all is his art journal, which has pages containing the notes for his other classes as much as it details his progress of the semester for his Fine Arts class.

Somehow, they do go together though. 

Stiles puts his bag on the table, kicking it further away from him when he reaches back to rest his feet on either side of his things. The seat beside him is unoccupied, because Stiles is always early to this class and Derek is always late, and everyone else knows that the pair always sit together. Stiles with his self-altered clothing and combat boots perched awkwardly somewhere that isn’t the ground as he contorts himself over his sketchbook, and Derek with his button-ups and cardigans and jeans that may be just as skinny as Stiles’ but have nowhere as many rips and tears, whether they’re intentional or not. 

“Get your feet off the table,” Derek says, appearing beside him, and using his Herschel Supply backpack to push Stiles’ legs off of the table, “Stop trying to show off your ‘I’m so punk, I don’t care what I look like, I don’t buy into consumerism’ jeans, that probably cost you more than a designer pair.” 

Stiles shuffles himself to get comfortable again, deciding to fold his feet awkwardly beneath him and sit cross-legged. He fumbles in his attempt to keep his balance, smiling when Derek reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, making sure he doesn’t fall backwards off of his stool because he overestimated his balance. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“That is a horrible impression of me. And I’ll have you know that none of these rips were paid.”

Derek baits, “What are they from, then?” 

“This one,” Stiles gestures to the shin of his left leg where the denim looks as if someone took sandpaper to it, “is from when I decided to jump into a bowl on a skateboard when I’d never ridden one before,” he gestures to a scar that runs vertically down his left elbow, “as is this, from the surgery I needed after I broke my arm in two places at the same time. Dad had just bought me the jeans and I felt so bad about ripping them, that all I could do was apologise for the hole in them when Scott took me back home and knocked on the front door while I stood there in shock and unable to talk, covered in blood. The first thing I said to him was, ‘I can pay you back for the jeans’, and then, ‘Is my arm supposed to be bent there?’” 

Derek huffs out a laugh, opening his own bag to seek out the folder he needs. 

His system is complex but neat, whereas Stiles doesn’t have a system, but gets along just as well. Derek always attributes his grades to being prepared, to being organized, which Stiles thinks is a lie. He thinks that Derek is a genius, if not caught up too much in the technical side of things at times, but he hides behind his intellect. Behind having to consistently work at it, because he doesn’t know who he is yet. 

Stiles is the same way; he doesn’t know where he’s going, or if he’ll end up married with children, or what job he wants, or whether or not he’s going to have enough rent money to cover the month because he spent his money replacing his glasses after the last ones were lost in a “freak moshpit accident”.

(“It’s not a freak accident if you decided to stagedive, Stiles,” his dad had sighed when Stiles lamented over his situation, and even though he swore that Stiles got himself into this mess so he could get himself out, he still offered to pay for replacement frames until Stiles could scrape enough money together to get by.)

He thinks he’s on the right path though. He hopes he is, at least, because if he’s not then he might regret the choices he’s made that he can’t ever come back from. 

“This,” he sticks his finger into a tiny hole in the back of his knee, “is a reminder that people who say ‘don’t run with scissors’ should be listened to. Not only should you not run with them, but you should also not have them in your hand when you’re using your arms to push yourself up onto a kitchen counter.” 

He goes through his multiple war stories, enthusiastically waving his hands around as the students around him work on their pieces for the class. Derek doesn’t even pretend to work on anything, because art is his least favourite subject and he’s only doing it because his sister, a Fine Arts major, forced him into trying something new. 

He was going to drop the class almost immediately, knowing he could at least pull the excuse that he tried, but then he saw Stiles sitting in the front row and actually doing work in a class for what seemed like the first time ever.

Derek had seen him around campus. They’d even been in a couple of classes together, but Stiles was almost always absent or working on something else completely irrelevant. 

Stiles intrigued Derek, and because Derek thought everything had a formula, that everything was action and reaction, he wanted to know what Stiles was reacting to. 

The whole punk thing? It was a social commentary, it was someone standing up for something, and Derek wanted to know why Stiles thought he had a right to stand up for when everyone else was just trying to get through the day. 

“That doesn’t explain the knees,” Derek finds himself saying, unable to tear his eyes away from the way the denim, over both knees, appears rough and worn.

Stiles blushes, reaching up to tug at his septum ring which had been sitting crookedly.

“You want to know why the knees of my jeans are so messed up?” He asks, head tilted.

It is then that Derek realises the answer, and he should have known because Stiles is always so open about everything. Derek could probably recount every single time Stiles came into the art tutorial only to describe the activities he’d gotten up to over the past few days, how he’d gotten onto his knees in the bathroom of a club or in the alleyway behind it. 

He remembered this because Stiles was an avid storyteller, if not inappropriate, and not because he was jealous. He was definitely not jealous, because as much as Stiles intrigued him, they were still academic competitors. Derek didn’t know how, but Stiles aced every class they’d ever been in together. He always bragged about how his grades were just as good as Derek’s, if not better, and he never did anything in class. 

His interest towards Stiles was sparked by academic competition, and between all of his classes, he had no time to be jealous over someone who Stiles was tearing holes in the knees of his jeans for.

Even so, Derek doesn’t know whether or not to be relieved when the tutor interrupts Stiles with a comment on how everyone should be working on their final pieces. 

**

“You would work here,” Derek says, sidling up to the counter of the café, his eyes more on the menu board than on Stiles, “and you cut your hair again.”

“It’s the only place that would hire me with my tattoos,” Stiles shrugs, his ‘mom’ tattoo peaking above his collar of his plain black v-neck and the beginning of his chest piece visible just above the neckline, “and I don’t have to wear a uniform, so that’s nice. And, yeah,” he says, running a hand over the buzzed sides of his head, fingers drifting over the wolf tattoo, it’s one of Derek’s favourites, “I was on the phone with Dad last night, and he told me that I shouldn’t have to hide who I was. I mean, he was talking about being bisexual, but it’s not just that either. Getting a respectable job to look after the wife and kids I’m not sure I even want at the cost of not being able to look how I want? Not worth it.” 

Derek nods, and because he has nothing else to say, doesn’t know how to tell Stiles that he’s perfect just the way he is, he says, “Can I just get a dirty chai?” 

Usually Stiles would probably make some kind of joke, especially given the name of the drink Derek just ordered, but he doesn’t have one today. 

Not when his little “I have seen the light and know what there is left to stand for” confession went ignored.

He hands over the drink in silence. He doesn’t given Derek his number like he’d been meaning to, even though he’d written it down on a napkin the minute he saw Derek walk through the door. 

A cute girl with pink hair and leather boots comes up to the counter a few minutes later, and Stiles thinks about handing the napkin to her, but instead he throws it out. 

**

When Derek gets to class, the first thing he notices is that Stiles isn’t there. It’s odd, because no matter how many classes he’s seen (or not seen, as it were) Stiles skip, he’s never missed this one. He always goes on about how art is an outlet and how he wants to know everything about it, both the practical and theoretical side of it, because he’s paying thousands of dollars to decorate his skin with people who are claiming to be professionals of the field. 

He wants to understand why some people think ‘art’ is a subjective term where others absolutely disagree, and he wants to know whether it’s dependent on geographical location or religious upbringing. 

His defense on his constant attendance to the class appeals to Derek’s nerd side, and it literally stops him in his steps when he realises that Stiles’ isn’t there. He’s pulling out his phone, ready to shoot a text and make sure Stiles isn’t on his deathbed or something, when he remembers that he doesn’t even have Stiles’ number. 

The class passes in silence with Derek actually focusing on his work for once. 

He tears out the page he’d been working on as soon as the class is dismissed. 

He resolutely does not think about how this is the first time he’s been unhappy enough with a sketch to rip it out of his book ever since Stiles started sitting next to him. The constant stream of encouragement and explanations, decoding art as a mathematical expression of lines precisely angled to intercept with other lines in order to form shapes, that Stiles came out with may have been bullshit, but it usually helped Derek nonetheless.

**

Derek finds himself in the café he knows Stiles works at. Gorillaz is playing over the speakers, and this is how he knows Stiles is on shift. As much as he parades around with oversized headphones that play the Red Hot Chilli Peppers louder than necessary, or old school Sex Pistols when he’s in a bad mood, Derek knows that the Gorillaz are Stiles’ favourite band. 

He knows this like the way he knows lots of things about Stiles, things that he never thought mattered at all. But, really, isn’t the small things what make up a person? 

The way that Stiles doesn’t try to rebel against any authority figure with his appearance, because his quick-witted words and attitude are enough of a ‘fuck you’ if anyone bothered listening close enough. 

He doesn’t have Stiles’ phone number, but he has a verbal collection of Stiles’ entire childhood hidden away in his memory. He has Stiles’ real name, his birth name, on the tip of his tongue, because he saw it written down once even though Stiles had tried to hide it from him. He has the meanings behind the art work scarred onto Stiles’ body, and the explanations behind the literal scars as well. 

He has a lot of things. And, when Stiles looks up and sees Derek, easily mirroring the easy grin that’s found it’s way onto Derek’s face, Derek thinks he has more than just that. 

He thinks that he has Stiles too.


End file.
